Contemporary Authors

• The Space Between - 2006 River City Publishing, Montgomery, AL
• The Good Divide - 2016 MG Press, Des Plaines, IL

• Iowa City Book Festival - http://www.iowacitybookfestival.org/speakers/kali-vanbaale/

  In the lush countryside of Wisconsin, Jean Krenshaw is the ideal 1960’s dairy farm wife. She cooks, sews, raises children, and plans an annual July 4th party for friends and neighbors. But when her brother-in-law Tommy, who lives next door, marries leery newcomer Liz, Jean is forced to confront a ten-year-old family secret involving the unresolved death of a young woman. With stark and swift prose, The Good Divide explores one woman’s tortured inner world, and the painful choices that have divided her life, both past and present, forever.

  Kali VanBaale’s debut novel, The Space Between, earned an American Book Award, the Independent Publisher’s silver medal for general fiction, and the Fred Bonnie Memorial First Novel Award. Kali holds an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has been an assistant professor of writing and literature at Drake University and is a faculty member in the Lindenwood University MFA Creative Writing Program. Born and raised on a dairy farm in rural southern Iowa, she currently lives and writes on an acreage outside Des Moines with her husband, three children, and highly emotional dog.

• Kali VanBaale Home Page - https://www.kalivanbaale.com/about

  About Kali

  Author photos by Bethany Kohoutek
  Kali VanBaale's debut novel, The Space Between, earned an American Book Award, the Independent Publisher’s silver medal for general fiction, and the Fred Bonnie Memorial First Novel Award. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Numéro Cinq,The Milo Review, Northwind Literary, Poets & Writers,The Writer and the anthologies Voices of Alzheimer's and A Cup of Comfort for Adoptive Families.

  Her second novel, The Good Divide, was published by Midwestern Gothic Press in 2016.

  Her third novel, The Cure for Hopeless Causes, was awarded a State of Iowa Arts Council major artist grant and is currently represented by Marsal Lyon Literary Agency pending publication. In 2014 she was awarded the Great River Writer’s Retreat to begin work on a fourth novel.

  Kali holds an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has been an assistant professor of writing and literature at Drake University and currently is a faculty member in the Lindenwood University MFA in Writing Program. Born and raised on a dairy farm in rural southern Iowa, she currently lives and writes on an acreage outside Des Moines with her husband, three children, and highly emotional dog.

• Urban Plains - https://urban-plains.com/culture/qa-with-author-kali-vanbaale/

  Q&A WITH AUTHOR KALI VANBAALE

  Iowan VanBaale talks pulling inspiration from your roots, the Midwest publishing industry and her upcoming novels

  Words by Emily VanSchmus
  Photos courtesy of Kali VanBaale

  Kali VanBaale has a complicated relationship with the Midwest. The novelist grew up on a dairy farm, embraces her Midwestern roots in her writing and loves plenty of things about her home state, Iowa. There’s also a few things she hates.

  2_Copy of Jacket Photo 2015“The extreme conservatism and passive aggression sometimes wears me down,” VanBaale said. “And damn, I wish we had better seafood.”

  Those things haven’t stopped VanBaale from writing about the Midwest. Each of her novels is set in the middle of the country and centered around the values and culture she’s infatuated with. Her books, The Space Between and The Good Divide, draw directly from her roots to create a setting that captures the charm of the flyover states. Her writing immediately transports the reader to a small-town Midwestern setting, no matter what their physical location. And people noticed: It’s earned her an American Book Award, the Independent Publisher’s silver medal for general fiction and the Fred Bonnie Memorial First Novel Award.

  We sat down with VanBaale to talk about how landlocked states influenced her book, the setbacks of writing in the Midwest and stereotypes.

  Urban Plains: As a Midwestern author, how much of your success do you attribute to your Midwestern roots?

  VanBaale: Nearly all of it. I grew up in a pretty recessed area of southern Iowa, outside of a small town called Bloomfield. And I’m the daughter of dairy farmers, so my entire existence was built on the notion of simple, hard work. If I’ve learned anything it’s that natural talent, intelligence, industry connections, money—those things will only get you so far in the writing world. Plain, old-fashioned hard work is what gets writers over the finish line. I can’t tell you how many naturally talented writers I’ve worked with over the years that gave up writing because they didn’t seem to have the grit required of writers. That’s probably the greatest personality trait the Midwest has given me: grit.

  UP: Reviews for The Good Divide praised your description of “farm folklore.” What impact did your farming background have on your writing?

  KV: I grew up on a dairy farm that was first owned and operated by my grandparents, and then later by my parents and aunt and uncle. It was very much a family operation and multiple families lived and survived off it for over 40 years. That kind of dependence on the land beneath your feet creates a connection to place that I don’t think ever breaks for farmers, even long after they leave. And I definitely grew up with farm folklore—old stories, wives tales, superstitions and beliefs—that bleeds into my work even when I don’t realize it. But the influence heavily shapes my writing aesthetic, and honestly, I’m a better writer for it.

  3_Copy of Kali & calf
  VanBaale’s dairy farming roots were the basis for her second novel, The Good Divide.
  UP: Where did your inspiration come from for your first novel?

  KV: The Space Between was inspired by the tragic events of the Columbine shootings in 1999. I was pregnant with my first child at the time and it was a scary event to watch unfold while staring over the cliff of parenthood. While my heart broke for the victims’ families, I couldn’t stop thinking about the parents of the two boys who committed the massacre. I became obsessed about what the inner workings of their families might look like, and soon after, I started writing The Space Between.

  UP: What about your second book?

  KV: My second novel, The Good Divide, was wholly inspired by my childhood on my family’s dairy farm and the complicated nature of farm life, but particularly of farm wives. While the story is fiction, I did draw heavily on actual details and events from my life.

  UP: How so?
  KV: I recently discovered that every book I’ve written has been my version of a love letter to something. My first book was my letter to motherhood. My second book was my letter to my family’s dairy farm. My third book (The Cure for Hopeless Causes, publication pending) is my letter to small, rural Midwestern towns and my fourth novel-in-progress is my letter to my 80s childhood in the Midwest. I think the reason I write to such personal themes is because, like most writers, I write to understand life—my own life, the lives of others. Really, to just understand the world around me.

  UP: Is that hard, though, when so much of the publishing world is focused on New York, the coasts—basically everywhere but the world around you?

  VB: It does feel like there’s a challenge to get published as a Midwestern author living in and writing about the Midwest. Aside from simply being cut off geographically to the East Coast—the epicenter of publishing—the Midwest is also often regarded as a “flyover state” with this peaceful, pastoral reputation, even though it’s a total stereotype. Midwesterners are certainly complex creatures with dark sides. We’re just as capable of being terrible people. We can be addicts, tell lies, make huge mistakes and hurt the ones we love. It’s just that we generally do it under the guise of politeness and manners.

  UP: Is there any way to get away from that “Iowa nice” stereotype in the publishing world?

  KV: There is a small movement embracing the grittier stories of the Midwest. The publisher of The Good Divide, Midwestern Gothic Press, is Midwest-based and specifically publishes dark Midwestern stories by Midwestern authors. There are also literary journals, like Midwestern Gothic and Storm Cellar for example, that embrace this aesthetic and have a rapidly growing readership.

  That’s probably the greatest personality trait the Midwest has given me: grit.”

  – Kali VanBaale

  UP: How would your work be different if you had chosen different locations for the settings?

  KV: I think I wouldn’t have as much self-confidence in my stories and my writing if I chose non-Midwestern locations or settings. When I write about Midwestern settings—whether rural or city—I feel it in my bones that I know these places and these people. I understand on a cellular level their strengths and weaknesses, their loves and traditions, their quirks and annoyances, what they say, and more importantly, how they say it. If I moved my stories to another geographical location I don’t understand as well as I do the Midwest, I think I would lose that intimate knowledge and confidence in my storytelling. Maybe someday I’ll tire of writing about the Midwest and try writing about somewhere else, but for now, I still have a full well to draw from.

• Fiction Writers Review - http://fictionwritersreview.com/interview/with-closed-fists-an-interview-with-kali-vanbaale/

  INTERVIEWS | JUNE 16, 2016

  With Closed Fists: An Interview with Kali VanBaale
  "I think this is the true defining literary tradition of the Midwest: all the things we don’t say": Kali VanBaale chats with Donald Quist about her new novel from Midwestern Gothic Press, The Good Divide.

  by DONALD QUIST
  What I first noticed about Kali VanBaale was her voice—a stern edginess beneath a welcoming Midwestern accent. We met in Burlington International Airport, both waiting for a passenger van to the Vermont College of Fine Arts. During the ride to Montpelier, I was too nervous to speak. I listened to Kali chat with our fellow MFA candidates. I chuckled softly and nodded in agreement with her dark witty observations. When we arrived at the campus and removed our luggage from the shuttle, I offered to carry Kali’s baggage up three floors to her room in the residence hall.
  This led to one of the most important connections in my life. Kali’s voice has stayed with me since the day I reached for her suitcase, and it continues to motivate my own writing. Through my friendship with Kali VanBaale, I have learned a lot about labor, love, and persistence. And, I have benefitted from her insights on publishing and craft.
  Kali’s prose bares her unique cadence, featuring compassionate narratives that challenge misconceptions about motherhood, matrimony, and the American Midwest. I enjoyed having the opportunity to chat again with Kali and discuss style and approach, library circulation trends, similarities between rappers and novelists, and the frequent dismissal of Midwestern literature.
  In addition to her most recent novel, The Good Divide, released this month from MG Press, VanBaale is the author of The Space Between (River City Publishing, 2006), which earned an American Book Award, the Independent Publisher’s silver medal for general fiction, and the Fred Bonnie Memorial First Novel Award. Her third novel, The Cure for Hopeless Causes, was awarded a State of Iowa Arts Council major artist grant and is currently pending publication. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The Milo Review, Northwind Literary, The Writer and the anthologies Voices of Alzheimer’s and A Cup of Comfort for Adoptive Families.
  Kali VanBaale holds an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has been an assistant professor of writing and literature at Drake University and Upper Iowa University. She currently lives and writes outside Des Moines with her husband and three children.
  Interview:

  Donald Quist: I’ve known you for a few years, but I don’t think I’ve ever asked you how long you’ve been writing. 




  Kali VanBaale: I’ve been writing as a hobby since I was about thirteen. I started with poetry, if you can believe it…very, very, bad poetry. I progressed to short stories in undergrad. When I was twenty-five and pregnant with my first child, I decided to take the leap and get serious about writing. So I quit my job—with my husband’s blessing—and started a novel. It’s been roughly twenty years, fifteen of them that I would call full-time.
  Poetry can be like a gateway drug for fiction authors. 








  I think all writers secretly start with poetry.
  So, during your pregnancy you decided to get serious about your writing. Do you remember the moment when you first identified as a writer?
  Kali VanBaale; photo by Bethany Kohoutek
  Kali VanBaale; photo by Bethany Kohoutek
  

I do remember. After my son was born, I joined my first writers’ group at a local Barnes & Noble. I brought a few pages to read out loud from a novel I had started, and I was absolutely crucified. They hated it. I actually left the store in tears. But make no mistake, they were right. It was terrible. And you would think that would’ve totally discouraged me, but instead I got into my car and had this very, “F*** you, I’m coming back next week with something better because I’m a writer and I’m here to learn” reaction. It was the first time I clearly recall thinking, “I AM a writer and I’m not going anywhere.”
  I had a similar defining moment. I attended a workshop in Spartanburg, South Carolina, headed by C. Michael Curtis, fiction editor for The Atlantic. He said the story I’d submitted was, “Static. Colorful static.” I vowed to do better.
  Maybe that’s how we all come to see ourselves as writers: when someone dares to tell us we’re not.
  In the dedication of your forthcoming novel, The Good Divide (Midwestern Gothic Press), you thank your parents “For giving me such a nice beginning to my own story.” I’m familiar with parts of your childhood after reading your gorgeous essay “Farm Crisis Kid” at Numéro Cinq, but could you tell me a little more about your family and where you were raised? 









  I’m a total 80’s Gen-X farm kid. I was born and raised on a dairy farm outside of a tiny town called Bloomfield in rural southern Iowa. Kind of a poor area, lots of Amish, far from anything considered important. My early childhood was a bit charmed. I had fields and creeks and timbers as my playground, and I was a very strange, imaginative child. It was the perfect environment to entertain myself. But in the early 80s, the farm crisis hit and brought seasons of floods and droughts and bankruptcies and worry. It was the first time I started to realize my family was a little poor. Not starving poor, but struggling no matter how hard they worked because so much of their livelihood was out of their control. For me, it was the beginning of a lifetime of anxiety and a distrust of many things—money, faith, prayer, even the weather. My family and farm came out of the crisis intact, but it had long lasting effects that took me decades to recognize. I’m forty-one and I still feel that poor, buck-toothed, frizzy-haired farm kid looking over my shoulder every time I type a word onto the screen.
  The Good DivideIn the end, though, my parents did give me my greatest asset, which is the willingness to work hard for what I want. That’s what I believe in: hard work. I have them to thank for that.
  And you still reside in Iowa. Why did you decide to stay in the Midwest? 










  Yes, I do still live in Iowa, outside of Des Moines, which is about two hours away from the farm where I grew up. My parents retired and built a house down the road so that they’re closer to my kids and can help as they get older. I’ve considered moving to another state a few times—my husband once had a job prospect in Washington and turned it down—but I think it’s different for farm kids. Your survival and livelihood has literally been dependent on the land beneath your feet. You become very attached to it in a way that’s hard to articulate to non-farm kids. The soil, I think, is born in your blood. I went through a stage in my late 20s and early 30s where I felt very self-conscious about being from Iowa and still living here by choice. I would attend writing conferences or festivals or whatever and someone would inevitably ask, “Where do you live?” I would answer, “Iowa.” They would then follow up with, “Oh, did you attend the workshop?” As in, the famed Iowa Writers Workshop. And when I would answer no, that I live in Iowa by choice, their eyes would glaze over. It got to me for a time. I would stutter out explanations or tell stories about how much I’ve traveled around the world, sounding very defensive, no doubt. But then as I neared my 40s, I just stopped caring so much about what other people thought. I’ve lived in Iowa my whole life. So what? I still have something to say and living in Iowa hasn’t ever prevented me from saying it. 






  That reminds me: I came across a quote from rapper Wiz Khalifa that I wanted to share with you: “When you’re from the East Coast or you’re from the South, people expect you to sound a certain way. So if you don’t sound that way, people won’t label you as that type of artist. For me, I had a whole new lane to create for myself being a Midwest artist.”
  I find this true in publishing too. It has been my experience that, despite having birthed some of the most celebrated novelists in history, the Midwest is often overlooked when people think of literature. The South, the East coast, and the West coast have more cohesive and clearly defined literary traditions and communities. Would you agree with that observation?
  Yes. Wiz gets it. And yes, you’re exactly right about the Midwest being overlooked. I have a theory that the chronic dismissal of the Midwest and Midwestern writers is partly the fault of East and West coasters stereotyping everyone in the Midwest—we’re all nice, go to church, and grow corn—and partly the fault of Midwesterners themselves—we’re heavily defined by restraint and the unspoken. A lot is left unsaid behind the polite smiles of Midwesterners, and passive aggression runs amok. I think this is the true defining literary tradition of the Midwest: all the things we don’t say. And I have the therapy bills to prove it.
  the space betweenWe’ll come back to this in a moment because it echoes themes in your work. First, let’s talk about how you made your own lane. Could you describe the process of how you got your first and second novel published and how these experiences differed? 



  My first novel was published after I submitted to and won a contest called the Fred Bonnie Memorial First Novel Award with River City Publishing. The award came with a publishing contract, a small advance, and a hardback print run. It was the true start of my career, and I will always be indebted to River City for giving me a chance. River City Publishing, coincidentally, is primarily a southern publisher based in Montgomery, Alabama, but three of us who have won the Fred Bonnie Award live in or attended school in the Midwest.
  Midwestern Gothic Press will publish my second novel this month—they’re based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I first connected with them through the AWP Conference. They then later emailed me and asked if I had anything they could look at for their journal, which I didn’t, but I did say I had a novel that had been sitting idle for a while, so they asked to look at that. And here we are. They’ve been a perfect fit for this second book. An agent represents my third novel, and she’s furiously working to sell it as we speak. But no matter what lane I’m in for any given book, it’s hard. Publishing is just hard.
  Your debut novel, The Space Between, was released in 2006. Your second novel, The Good Divide, appears now in June of 2016. That’s a long gap. Could you talk about what you were up to and how your writing has developed in that time?
  Ah, the ten-year plan. Not actually part of my “plan.” I had a lot of life and living happen in those ten years that caused delays. My husband and I adopted a daughter from India, while my boys transitioned from elementary to middle to high school and driving. I started teaching creative writing at conferences, and later at Drake University and Upper Iowa University for two years. And I watched far too many hours of Netflix.
  I also went back to graduate school and got my MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. 
It’s hard to articulate how grad school changed my writing because three years later I’m still discovering changes. I think above all, my time at VCFA pushed me to find my voice. What is it I write? Who am I as a writer? What do I want to say? In some ways my grad school experience turned me completely sideways trying to answer those questions, but once the ship was righted, I felt like I finally knew what I wanted to say, put my pen to the page, and now say it with confidence.
  Finally, I had the chance to meet some really, really cool people at Vermont. There this was this one guy, the very first day, who took pity on me and carried my massive suitcase up three flights of stairs. I wonder whatever happened to that loser?
  Ahem, he’s become one of your best friends and greatest admirers . . .
  Speaking of admiration, despite being one of the most proficient storytellers I know, you also happen to be one of the most doubtful. You’ve been compared to Richard Yates, one of your favorite authors, and received praise from writers like David Jauss and Laura Kasischke. However, you still worry whether your writing is good enough. I’m less concerned with the origins of this uncertainty; I think all serious artists struggle with the same feelings of inadequacy at some point in their career. My question is, why do you continue to write and what pushes you through seasons of doubt and drought? 










  Kali VanBaale; photo by Bethany Kohoutek
  Kali VanBaale; photo by Bethany Kohoutek
  Some days it feels like self-criticism and doubt will be my undoing. But here’s the weird reverse psychology part: I work best when I feel like I’m being underestimated or doubted. If everyone sings me praises, I’ll buy my own bulls*** and lose my will to fight. It’s a ridiculous way to work, I know, but it’s how I’m hardwired. I have to go at everything with closed fists. Praise makes me uncomfortable and I squirm and don’t know how to respond. Criticism lights a fire under me and I get back to work… Dave Jauss is one of the greatest human beings, by the way.
  About the way you work, let’s discuss overarching themes in your narratives. In your first book, Judith Elliot’s world is shattered after her teenage son orchestrates a school shooting that ends four lives, including his own. In your short story, “Jar of Nails,” at The Milo Review, Jessie drops an infant at a baby shower. Your upcoming novel centers on Jean Krenshaw, a Wisconsin dairy farm wife secretly involved in the unusual death of a local woman. Your heroines wrestle with guilt, alienation, and isolation. Their stories oppose widely held perceptions of idyllic rural and suburban life in Middle America. I’m curious: when you approach a project how important is it for you to build on these themes? What are some other trends in your work, planned and discovered? 




  So many people in Middle America I’ve gotten to know are complex beings just like people anywhere else. They make mistakes big and small, hurt people they love and have tangled family trees. They have phobias and neuroses, moments in their past they’d rather forget, and current relationships they’re struggling to save. That’s what interests me. That’s what I want to write about: women who make mistakes and how—or if—they move on from them, and imperfect, even dysfunctional, families that are still, in the end, families. This idyllic rural and suburban life of Middle America—I’ve never been there. It sounds terribly boring.
  Here’s something interesting I recently discovered while working on my current novel-in-progress: every book I’ve written has been my dark and twisty version of a love letter to something. My first book was my version of a love letter to motherhood. My second book is a love letter to my family’s farm. My third book is a love letter to the small town where I grew up. And this new work-in-progress is a love letter to my 80’s childhood. It took me four books to figure out this is what I’m doing.
  When you’re not writing you have a job at local library, right? 









  Yes, I work part time as a substitute for the Des Moines Public Library and their six locations, and it has been truly eye-opening as to what books the majority of the public reads. Or, maybe, depressing. It’s made me think much more about the commercial viability of my writing and my books. I see the same books by the same authors checked out over and over. James Patterson can release a book and the library will order five copies for one location, and there’s a waiting list as long as my arm. But a small, gorgeously written book by an emerging author will get only a handful of checkouts and then sit on the shelf collecting dust. Someone like Lee Martin (whose writing I really admire) releases a new book and I had to request that the library order it. Really opened my eyes to how hard it is to get beautiful books into the hands of readers.
  Who are other contemporary Midwestern novelists that inspire you?
  The Boook of RuthI’m a crazy, super fan of Jane Hamilton. Her debut novel The Book of Ruth is the book that made me want to be a writer. I met her at the library a few years ago and I totally embarrassed myself. She was so gracious—nary a restraining order. I love Hamilton’s writing, her rawness. The voices she creates for her characters—their longing. Yes, Lee Martin, love his books. And, of course, the grand master of Midwestern fiction Sherwood Anderson.
  In his review of your new novel, Mathieu Cailler compares you to Sherwood Anderson. I’m sure praise like this makes you uncomfortable. And you don’t write for the riches and fortune. So, what do you want from your work and what do you hope for your writing to accomplish? 


  I could hardly read that review it made me so utterly overjoyed and painfully uncomfortable all at once. What I always hope to accomplish, first and foremost, is to engage the reader in some way—whether through escapism, entertainment, or an emotional connection. I just want the reader to feel like it was time well spent with this story and characters, whatever the reasons for the reader.

The Good Divide
Bridget Thoreson
Booklist.
112.19­20 (June 1, 2016): p58.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
The Good Divide. By Kali VanBaale. June 2016.202p. MG, paper, $15 (9781944850005).
There are secrets lurking beneath the surface of Jean Krenshaw's seemingly simple existence as a dairy farmer's wife.
After her girlhood moving from town to town as her father was evicted time and again, she sought the stability of a
home and marriage in the first place she felt like she belonged. But living in a small Wisconsin town during the 1960s,
Krenshaw soon finds that stability and happiness don't always go hand in hand. Award­winning novelist VanBaale has
created a tight psychological portrait of a woman slowly being suffocated by the choices she has made, living in close
proximity to the life she desperately wants. Her husband's younger brother lives just across the road, and his marriage
to an art student from Madison brings up distressing memories for Krenshaw. VanBaale precisely balances Krenshaw's
growing discomfort with the couple across the way with the unspooling of her story from her arrival in the town as a
lonely teenager. The Good Divide offers a poignant look at love's lasting legacy.­­Bridget Thoreson
Thoreson, Bridget
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Thoreson, Bridget. "The Good Divide." Booklist, 1 June 2016, p. 58. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA456094178&it=r&asid=a9227ca4cd72ee4260fea5e29b9cc2a9.
Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A456094178
2/5/2017 General OneFile ­ Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1486324756120 2/2
The Good Divide
Publishers Weekly.
263.15 (Apr. 11, 2016): p36.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Good Divide
Kali VanBaale. MG Press (Ingram, dist.), $15 (202p) ISBN 978­1­944850­00­5
Set in the fictional town of Chickering in rural southern Wise., VanBaale's second novel is a devastating story of
dreams deferred, loves lost, and souls scarred. Jean Gillman was 13 years old when her mother died, leaving her with a
Struggling hog­farming father who would relocate every few years. Soon after the Gillmans move to Chickering, Jean
meets the Krenshaw brothers, whose family has owned a dairy farm for generations. Jean eventually marries the older
Krenshaw boy, Jim, and they live in one of two farmhouses on the Krenshaw property with their three sons. Jim's
younger brother, good­natured bachelor Tommy, occupies the other house. When Tommy marries city slicker Liz from
Madison, Jean knows something's not quite right. She keeps her suspicions to herself, but they ultimately force her to
revisit a personal secret she's kept for a decade. VanBaale (The Space Between) grew up on an Iowa dairy farm, a fact
reflected in her attention to the nitty­gritty details of the Krenshaws' daily life. By alternating the narrative among the
early 1950s, when Jean moved to Chickering; the mid­1960s, during her marriage to Jim; and the late 1980s, when
she's thrust into a midlife she never imagined, VanBaale presents a vivid portrait of one woman's lifelong struggle to
find peace with what she has rather than what she desires. Fiction doesn't get more real than this. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"The Good Divide." Publishers Weekly, 11 Apr. 2016, p. 36. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA449662945&it=r&asid=8bde0da199db62d79dce5d77c79fd80a.
Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A449662945

• Punchnels
  http://www.punchnels.com/2016/03/22/review-the-good-divide-by-kali-vanbaale/
  Word count: 904

  Review: “The Good Divide” by Kali VanBaale
  WRITTEN BY: ALEX MATTINGLY | March 22, 2016
  BOOKS, REVIEWS
  The tension between destiny and desire has been fertile ground for stories since at least the day a talking snake suggested that maybe a bite of forbidden fruit would really hit the spot.

  Kali VanBaale

  And from the beginning of Kali VanBaale’s novel The Good Divide, there are hints that this tension is the source of the book’s sorrow. The novel opens cryptically with a scene of human frailty against the backdrop of generational determinism—two women, inheritors of family farms that have been passed down through their respective families, are unhappily linked by an unexplained infirmity. It is clear that something bad has happened, but to understand exactly what requires two parallel narratives that unfold through the rest of the book.

  The novel begins in 1963, as Jean Krenshaw and her husband Jim prepare to show off the Krenshaw’s new milking machine at a Fourth of July picnic. Wisconsin dairy farmers by birth, Jim and his brother Tommy live in a pair of houses divided only by a gravel drive. But despite living next door, Tommy arrives to the party late, and with company—his new girlfriend Liz.

  For Jean, this is disruptive, but it takes a much darker turn when Tommy hijacks the picnic for a surprise proposal. By Jean’s reaction we see how precariously the relationships on the farm are balanced—since, though Jean is married to Jim, she is actually in love with Tommy.

  The book’s second narrative starts a decade earlier, in 1952, when Jean—then Jean Gillman—first arrives in Wisconsin, traveling with a damaged and dangerous father who is forced by his debts to move from farm to farm. She is soon embraced by the Krenshaws, and especially by sweet-hearted Tommy—funny and charming and flirtatious, he casually offers Jean the affection she’s lacked for most of her adult life.

  But affection is not the same thing as love. And when it’s clear to the Krenshaw family matriarch, Eunice, what’s happening between Tommy and Jean, she does her best to warn the newcomer:

  “It’s a difficult life to live so close to what you cannot have. Remember that, Jean Gillman.”

  Jean shrank from Eunice’s unnerving, rheumy stare. “I don’t understand what…you mean,” she said.

  The branches in the tree above them began to rustle, raining bits of leaves and twigs onto the ground and porch roof. Jean and Eunice looked up and a white barn owl, with its heart-shaped face and black eyes, peered down at them from its perch.

  “White owl in daylight,” Eunice said, her eyes widening. “It’s a bad omen.”

  In very short order, Eunice’s soothsaying proves correct. But Jean digs in anyway—when she realizes that marriage is her best hope of escaping her abusive father, she accepts a proposal from Jim. Steadfast and earnest, Jim offers her the love that his brother can’t, and in that way the three settle into a stable, if not completely satisfactory, triangle.

  Or at least it seems stable, until Jean’s best friend, Sandy Weaver, comes to her in crisis. Pregnant with Tommy’s child, she turns to Jean for help, unaware of Jean’s feelings for him or of how Jean will handle the news. What Jean does—or doesn’t—do for Sandy will, ten years later, reverberate in her life with Liz.

  And so the two narratives find their resonance. As the story unfolds, half in the 1960s and half in the 1950s, it seems as though the same tragic history is fated to repeat itself, with Jean the key actor in both.

  VanBaale manages the complexity of her narrative with surprising ease. For as much as the book hops through time, each scene is carefully constructed and deployed. Information is at times withheld, but it never feels unfair—so much of this novel is about Jean’s struggle to manage her own secrets, and when the character flinches away from revelation it’s clear that this is her own survival tactic, not a narrative tease.

  But what’s most surprising about this novel, which ends in a lean 186 pages, is Jean Krenshaw’s complexity. She is likeable and unlikable, deeply sympathetic and profoundly unknowable, and her rendering is so well-executed that VanBaale will probably have to spend years reassuring worried friends and family about the definition of the word “fiction.”

  Because this is a novel that feels true, and the truth at the heart of The Good Divide is this: What seems like fate for Jean Krenshaw is only the result of her own desire. For Jean, these two forces—far from opposing one another—instead betray her in concert.

  *

  The Good Divide will be released in June, 2016. Click here to find purchasing information and links.

  Kali VanBaale’s debut novel, The Space Between, earned an American Book Award, the Independent Publisher’s silver medal for general fiction, and the Fred Bonnie Memorial First Novel Award. She is also the recipient of a State of Iowa Arts Council major project artist grant.

• Cultured Vultures
  https://culturedvultures.com/book-review-the-good-divide-by-kali-vanbaale/
  Word count: 913

  BOOKS
  BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Good Divide’ By Kali VanBaale
  Morghen TiddBy Morghen Tidd On May 26, 2016
  Share
  Summary
  A short novel that explores the cursed life of a dairy farmer’s wife with a complicated past.
  7/10
  The Good Divide
  Source: Midwest Gothic
  In her second novel, The Good Divide, Kali VanBaale tells the story of Jean Krenshaw, who, at first glance, appears to be living the simple Midwestern life with a successful family-run dairy farm, three healthy sons, and a close-knit community that gathers at the farm for the annual 4th of July parties. However, as the story unravels so does the tidy picture of Jean’s life and, chapter by chapter, the buried secrets surrounding her past are slowly revealed.

  The novel opens with the discussion of the farm, which has been in the Krenshaw family for over a century, and how it came to have two identical houses facing each other with only a small drive between them when the inheritors of the land married twin sisters who could not bear to be apart. While a booming farm on a hundred and ten acres sounds like a blessing for anyone who desires to have a farm, there’s a catch: it’s cursed.

  That is not to say that this story is one whose complete focus is on the supernatural or magical – far from it, actually. What is at the heart of this story are the struggles that Jean has gone through and the secrets that she keeps both from her childhood with self-harm and from happenings with the people she meets in the fictive town of Chickering. It all begins after her mother dies, leaving Jean and her abusive father to move from farm to farm and each time ending with him in debt and unable to pay the bills. With a life of displacement and a difficulty making friends, Jean is ecstatic when the Krenshaw brothers, Tommy and Jim, as well as Sandy Weaver befriend her shortly after moving to Chickering. While it is obvious that Jean initially develops feelings for the younger brother, Tommy, this attraction is given an ominous omen by one of the now elderly twin Krenshaw sisters who tells Jean, “It’s a difficult life to live so close to what you cannot have” when she, Eunice, realizes where Jean’s affections lie. Although Jean does not understand the older woman’s words right away, they begin to make sense when Jean marries Jim so she does not have to move again with her father and ends up living across the drive from Tommy. The tensions rise to an all-time high when Tommy becomes engaged with a newcomer, Liz, and Jean is forced to confront her feelings as well as the events surrounding her friend Sandy’s death.

  The revelation of Jean’s secrets is carefully crafted around a nonlinear progression of the chapters, each of which are given an exact date of occurrence and go back forth between the time that Jean moved to Chickering and the time after she is married to Jim Krenshaw. There are two exceptions to this, the first and last chapter, which instead are titled “Mistresses” in the place of a specific date. While often novels that use a nonlinear timeline feel disrupted, VanBaale is able to keep the story under control with the way she connects the chapters by content, giving a logical flow to the nonlinearity. For me, the nonlinear timeline is what brought the book to life while reading it because of the way that it allowed for the reader to slowly piece together Jean’s secrets and the effects that past events had on the ones later in the timeline.

  While some of the more minor characters lack the depth I would have liked to see – such as Jim – VanBaale’s creation of Jean makes up for this lack. Jean comes across at first as a typical housewife in the 1960s in the scene of the first chapter in which she is hosting the annual 4th of July party and making sure that everything goes along smoothly. However, she becomes more complicated when Tommy proposes to Liz, releasing her jealousy in an act of self-harm, and these complications only further as the story progresses. The reader cannot help but sympathize with Jean’s deep desire to feel accepted by people as well as her unrequited feelings for Tommy. At the same time, as her secrets get revealed, it is difficult to continue fostering this sympathy for Jean because of some of the choices she makes which directly affect the lives of others. This problematic relationship between the reader and Jean serves the story well in the way it creates a narrative that is not one-dimensional and straight-forward.

  For a novel that is just shy of 200 pages, The Good Divide deals with a remarkable amount of issues that could have served a much longer book. Although certain parts of the story felt a little short – Jim and Jean’s relationship as previously mentioned – Kali VanBaale still creates an intriguing story that handles difficult topics as well as a narrative of struggle and conflict in a skillfully crafted nonlinear timeline. If Southern Gothic is a genre that interests you, I suggest taking a leap up to the Midwest and seeing what this Krenshaw curse is all about.

• Coil
  https://medium.com/the-coil/book-review-the-good-divide-kali-vanballe-eric-shonkwiler-e37253faf2b0#.urib96h4j
  Word count: 667

  Eric Shonkwiler
  Author of Above All Men and 8th Street Power & Light, novels from @mwgothic, and Moon Up, Past Full, stories from @altcurrent.
  Oct 19, 2016
  Review: The Good Divide

  Kali VanBaale
  Fiction | Novel
  204 pages
  5” x 8” Paperback
  ISBN 978–1–944850–00–5
  First Edition
  MG Press
  Chicago, Illinois, USA
  Available HERE
  $15

  There’s something stirring in Kali VanBaale’s second novel, something that reaches past the book’s own pages. It’s an effort made by VanBaale and her publishers, MG Press, to go into the rarely-trod territory of the Midwest and to make a literary name for its people. As a Midwestern author myself, (and one with two books from MG Press), I’ve been on the front lines of the movement — but this is the first time I’ve felt a Midwestern book create something so familiar and yet so new. The Good Divide is a disarmingly quiet novel that centers on Jean Krenshaw — a stalwart farmer’s wife on a Wisconsin dairy — as she fights to bury, obliterate, and eventually redeem herself for a family secret. The book is split between two timelines, the 1950s and ’60s, and through these times, we become acquainted with the small cast surrounding Jean, principally Jim, her steadfast and oblivious husband; Tommy, his charming brother; and two of Tommy’s lovers. The cast and plot occasionally mirrors Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres — though the reader quickly finds that not only is there a secret or two held in the family, there’s also something deeply wrong with Jean.
  Coming from a poor background, with a dead mother and an alcoholic father, Jean has learned to sublimate her plentiful mental anguish for physical pain through whatever blade she has at hand. It’s in these acts, and the slow revelation of Jean’s deeper involvement and guilt in the events of the novel, that VanBaale brings to light the peculiarly Midwestern ethos so rarely made vivid: this is a darkness comparable in stature to Faulkner’s Southern Gothic, in deed if not in word. From late in the book:
  Jean vaguely heard Sandy’s plea, muffled by the blood still pounding in her eardrums. The skin on her palms began to burn and yet she kept squeezing, pushing the nails deeper, wanting to break the skin and feel blood. All at once, she smelled her mother, sweeping into the Clermont house wearing her best dress suit after getting caught in a rainstorm […]
  This is not Yoknapatawpha County, clearly, but its residents are just as troubled.
  Most of the events of the novel take place during small parties; on the 4th of July, Labor Day, all the social gatherings of farming communities — the excuses to let chores go for a few hours. VanBaale manages to braid these numerous parties with Jean’s own origins and the slow revelation of the secret she takes part in, the trouble to come, and the depths of her own issues. It’s difficult to elaborate without giving away too much, and at 200 pages, The Good Divide is a breezy read, but the author is constantly, quietly, building tensions and setting the stage for a final act that falls on the reader in a rush. Some of its parts are predictable, illuminated a little too well, but VanBaale manages, through creating a character with real — and, I think easily underestimated (by the reader) — depth and darkness, a climax that is shockingly human and contrary.
  With the depth of Jean, the pleasant ignorance of some characters and the disregard of others, VanBaale has created, in The Good Divide, a novel that takes the central conceit of the Midwest: we’re pleasant, quiet, and we deal with our pain internally and alone — and runs it to the logical conclusion. With the addition of The Good Divide to the American oeuvre, a part of the literary map is made complete.

• Coal Hill Review
  http://www.coalhillreview.com/book-review-great-divide-kali-vanbaale/
  Word count: 627

  Book Review: THE GOOD DIVIDE by Kali Vanbaale
  August 29, 2016 by admin ·
  TheGoodDivide_Cover300 The Good Divide
  by Kali Vanbaale
  Midwestern Gothic Press, 2016
  $15.00
  Reviewed by Victoria Albacete
  “A farm is like a mistress,” she muses, “a passively tolerated extramarital distraction.”
  On the surface, Jean Krenshaw is—in a word—reliable. A mother, a housewife, a farmhand, she is seemingly content to look after her husband and sons and play second fiddle to the dairy farm that has been the mistress of her husband’s family for decades. Yet, while Jean strives to be the ideal farm wife, dark secrets lurk in her past and deeply influence her present. Told through alternating flashbacks between the early 1950s and the mid-1960s, The Good Divide explores the corrupting influences of jealousy, passivity, and blind idolization as a deceptively ordinary Midwestern teenage girl becomes a woman.
  The narrative begins in an unknown year, with an unknown elderly farm wife narrating the conditions of her life. She lives with and cares for her disabled sister-in-law. Reminiscing on their shared history, she takes the reader back to the day that the two women first met: In the summer of 1963 in Chickering, Wisconsin, reliable Jean Krenshaw is introduced to the free-spirited Liz Belardi, a student from Madison dating Jean’s brother-in-law Tommy, and instantly dislikes her.
  Of course, it’s not just that Liz is exotic and modern while Jean feels plain and old-fashioned—Jean is secretly obsessed with Tommy, and she hints at a tragedy the last time that Tommy called any woman his girlfriend. The reader is then drawn back to 1952, when Jean first moves to Chickering as a teenager and meets Tommy, her future husband Jim, and the girl who would eventually become her best friend: Sandy Weaver.
  Again in the mid-60s, Liz and Tommy marry and Jean’s life begins to fall apart as she obsesses over the life she will never have with her brother-in-law. Concurrently, the events of the 1950s unfold and expose the reasons behind her intense jealousy and fixation with Tommy, as well as the truth behind Jean’s involvement in Sandy’s mysterious death. Here writer Kali Vanbaale is at her best, fluidly weaving Jean’s intricate history and methodically revealing the twisted state of her mind, especially through her struggles with self-harm and growing awareness of her discontentment with the ordinary life she lives. Vanbaale’s down-to-earth and realistic dialogue in particular brings each character to vivid life through Jean’s eyes.
  The concept of blind idolization is prevalent in the book, especially in the relationship of Jean and her deceased mother Marjorie. Vanbaale explores the consequences of how Jean’s idolization of her dead mother as she grows up in her father’s abusive home establishes a damagingly passive, take-it-on-the-chin mindset. “‘You cut your coat according to your cloth,’ my mother used to say.” By adhering to her mother’s wisdom of passivity, Jean fails to fight for anything she wants in her life that might require a struggle, and tries to force contentment by taking what she can get. Her illusion of contentment, however, is a thin veneer and fosters an intense buried jealousy and possessiveness towards the life Jean thinks she deserves with Tommy.
  Ultimately, however, as the narration concludes with a return to the elderly farm wife, The Good Divide balances the darker aspects of the story with the idea of atonement. Vanbaale suggests that despite jealousy and corruption, forgiveness can hold true and recompense is possible. A true Midwestern gothic, The Good Divide is an intriguing and engaging novel that presents and examines the possibilities of both beauty and ugliness within a person.

• Front Porch Journal
  http://frontporchjournal.com/issue-33/the-good-divide/
  Word count: 1094

  THE GOOD DIVIDE
  Kali VanBaaleJacket Photo 2015Kali VanBaale, The Good Divide
  Publisher: Midwestern Gothic
  2016, 186 pages, paperback, $15
  IT IS OFTEN said that all stories can be boiled down to two essential plots: a person goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town. I would argue that in the best stranger-comes-to-town-literature, the narrative is less about the actual stranger, and more about the impact of the newcomer’s presence. (If the story were the stranger’s, then it would make it a person-goes-on-a-journey one, right? I suppose it’s all a matter of perspective.)
  In Kali VanBaale’s slim and gripping new novel, The Good Divide, the newcomer is Liz Belardi, love interest of Tommy Krenshaw and all things exotic: feminist, Italian, college-educated. Yet, the novel has little to do with Liz, and all to do with our narrator, Jean Krenshaw, wife of Tommy’s brother, Jim, and mother to three young sons.
  The Krenshaw brothers run a dairy farm that’s been in the family for generations. The time is 1963. The place is Chickering, Wisconsin, where the law is clear: first comes farm, then comes God, and lastly, if there’s anything leftover, family. Farm life is harsh: men rise early to milk the cows, women are up at 4:30 a.m. to scrub floors and prepare hot meals. Death by tractor is no rarity, and human bodies reach old age before fifty. As Jean says in the opening of the prologue, “a farm is like a mistress, a passively tolerated extramarital distraction that keeps husbands out well past dark and wives pacing kitchen floors with cranky babies on their hips and supper plates gone cold at the table.”
  This swiftly-paced novel fits into the lurid genre that Electric Literature coins “Country Noir” and Fiddleback Journal terms “Antipastoralism.” Dipping back-and-forth from the present of the 1960’s into the 1950’s, the book centers on Jean, who has been dealt a particularly tragic hand at life, even for this rough country. Readers soon learn that her mother died when Jean was only thirteen, leaving her alone to care for her abusive, grief-stricken father. Struggling for money, Jean and her father moved around the mid-west, leasing pig farms until he couldn’t make rent and they had to pick up and try somewhere new. Along the way he sold family valuables, so all Jean has left to remember her mother by is words. In futile attempts to inject order into her desolate world, Jean often clings to her mother’s many aphorisms, such as “you reap what you sow,” “a tree falls the way it leans,” and “you lose the light when you chase the shadows.”
  When Jean is a teenager, she and her father arrive in Chickering. Jean, usually leery of companionship—as a means of self-preservation—finds herself taken under the Krenshaw family’s wings. Tommy and Jim, also teenagers at the time, become her friends, along with another girl, Sandy Weaver. Tommy is particularly personable, while Jim is shy and reserved. Tommy’s warmth ignites a desire for connection that was long dead in Jean. Soon she finds herself falling for Tommy, but he does not reciprocate. Instead, she is destined to marry Jim. Jim wants it. The Krenshaw family wants it. And when she learns her father must move again, Jim is her only way out, so in a sense, she wants it, too. She takes the hand of marriage offered and from there tries to build a life. She gets pregnant quickly, while she and Sandy make plans to open up a sewing shop in town. As her mother used to say, “you cut your coat according to your cloth.”
  Except, it isn’t as easy to escape her haunting past and secret longings as she thought. As Jim and Tommy’s perceptive great-aunt, Eunice, warns her: “it’s a difficult life to live so close to what you cannot have.” Yet somehow, Jean manages to get by, until Liz’s presence that is, which shatters Jean’s delicate semblance of order. Old wounds resurface, and she is forced to face all the jealousy, guilt, and grief that she’s repressed:
  She sensed a subtle shift happening in the tenuous stability of her inner workings. It was as if the scale of her life she’d so painstakingly balanced since the Chicago trip—endlessly stacking weights and counterweights to each side—had suddenly become lopsided since Liz’s arrival and gone into free fall.
  The novel begins with many mysteries. We know Jean feels guilty, but why? We know from the prologue she’s indebted to Liz, but we lack the reason. We learn early that a tragedy connects her to Tommy, and it has to do with the death of their mutual friend, Sandy Weaver, but readers know little more. Though this withholding creates immediate suspense, it doesn’t feel cheap. Instead, due to the skilled writing, readers accept that the text is presented in the order Jean is reliving her memories and reconstructing her personal narrative. We are following the pattern of her thoughts. Jean has stuffed down so many feelings, but now that Tommy loves Liz, a woman so different than herself, all is bubbling to the surface. She cannot contain. We see the bubbles and begin to piece together the depth of Jean’s pain and the complexity of her character.
  For though Jean is a character that calls for sympathy, she is not without her dark side, which is what makes this novel so strong. Life has proved an awful rule: just as she gets close to someone, they die or disappear. By the time we see Jean in the present, she survives burrowed inside herself, with no one to confide in. This burning anguish leads her down a path of destruction.
  The complicated and precise construction of Jean’s character, set in a time where the choices for women are stark and few, is what makes this book such a thrilling read. Though my heart broke often, I found myself deeply invested. I wanted so badly to reach into the story and hold Jean’s hand. The social worker in me wanted to provide pamphlets of resources (which of course weren’t available then, if they even would be now). I wanted to do something, for her to be less alone. To me, the mark of a good book is one that makes it impossible not to care.
  —Shannon Perri